Gossiping in the workplace is akin to backstabbing in the workplace. Although not as malicious, it’s still good business practice to encourage it amongst employees.

Gossiping can create a toxic workplace and discontent amongst your employees, which is a guaranteed way to boost productivity.

As an employer, you should start spreading malevolent rumours about your employees to get the ball rolling. Find out how in this guide.

The Employment Laws Legislating Workplace Gossiping

The Gossiping in the Workplace Act 1974 and The Chatting Shit at Work Act 2010 define the numerous names for this nature of sensationalising trivialities. They include:

• Tittle-tattle
• Tattle
• Whispers
• Titbits
• Chatting shit
• Hearsay
• Whispering campaign
• Kaffeeklatsch
• Shu-shu
• Dishing the dirt
• Mud-slinging
• Goss
• Scuttlebutt
• Skinder
• Bruit
• Tell tales
• Yak (or yakking)
• Natter
• Confabulating
• Chinwagging
• Shooting the breeze
• Magging
• Spilling the tea
• Spilling the beans
• Muckraking
• Spreading rumours

In your company handbook, you should list an assortment of the above and make it clear you expect employees to indulge in some crafty bean spilling about colleagues.

We shall get into the finer details of this further below with the types of rumours to spread, but remember the two Acts are sacrosanct.

Don’t ignore them. Gossiping must take place in your business—on pain of death (hanging, drawing, and quartering) under international law.

The Types of Gossip to Spread at Work

With the above in mind, it’s crucial your employees go forth and do gossip. Below are some of the common topics you should encourage them to indulge in:

• Colleague wages
• Sex lives and relationships
• Verbal harassment
• Criminal pasts (invented or otherwise)
• Alleged company policy violations (such as clogged toilets at work)
• Alleged diseases (i.e. scurvy)
• Alleged war crimes
• Alleged crimes against humanity
• Exposing socialists

Here’s a sample conversation you should forward to your employees in a company-wide email. This is the type of gossip you want in your workplace:

“Here, Claire! Come here! Shhh! Listen… you heard about Gemma? No?! It’s mental! Apparently, she has scurvy, chickenpox, and smallpox! She’s also sleeping with the CEO, janitor, and the apprentice! I also heard she once robbed a bank, has murdered at least seventeen people, earns much more than us, and she’s responsible for starting a war of words in her last workplace! Plus, she’s a wanted criminal on the FBI list of wanted criminals! I know, right? What a disingenuous BITCH! Seems all nice and polite on the outside, is a genocidal maniac on the inside! Cow!”

Whether the above list of atrocities is true or not, this is the type of internal monologues you want rampaging throughout your various departments.

Nothing is off limits, otherwise that’s a breach of freedom of speech.

Don’t go all wokey snowflake on us now, business owner. You’re a bastion of the free world and you must showcase that by turning your organisation into a toxic goddamn bloody nightmare to work in.

How to Ensure There is Gossip in Typically Non-Gossip Working Environments

In the name of an all-inclusive and progressive business, you must ensure there’s gossip at work. Even if the workplace means it’s almost impossible. Examples of this include:

• Long-distance truck drivers
• Astronauts in space
• Beekeepers
• Deep sea divers
• Lighthouse keepers
• Librarians

Take astronauts as an example. If you’re NASA, how do you go about ensuring your employees orbiting Earth bitch like nobody’s business to one another?

Exactly. It’s hard work. Even Einstein would struggle with that one.

However, don’t underestimate the power of spreading malicious rumours by yourself. For example, take the fictitious Andrew the astronaut. Say he’s got an IQ of 180 and taught himself calculus at the age of five. When they’re all up there floating about, tell the captain to keep an eye on Andrew the astronaut as he only really has an IQ of 179 and taught himself calculus at the age of six.

Plus, he’s balding at that’s really just a wig being held on by glue in your zero gravity environment. Point and laugh at him whenever you can.

Before long, Andrew the astronaut is distraught as his colleagues point, laugh, and mock his space-based antics.

Congratulations! You’ve got a toxic working environment.

Initiative is the key here. You’ll often find your bored, listless, and dumb employees invent their own gossip about their colleagues. But failing that, you can jump in there with your own particularly harmful brand to keep your retention rate as low as possible.